


implies an intention

by fraud



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, M/M, Miscommunication, Public Blow Jobs, Public Sex, Underage Kissing, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:54:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraud/pseuds/fraud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stripper AU where Dick and Damian are really not on the same page regarding Damian’s continued visits, and Damian has had just about enough of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	implies an intention

**Author's Note:**

> All I wanted to do was write some PWP back alley underage bj’s, and fucking Dick had to go and ruin it all. Cross posted from tumblr!

Gotham is burning.

Not literally- with the psychos that call this city their stomping ground, one always has to be clear on what’s literal and what’s just a turn of phrase- but Dick has to admit, its only a very minute distinction. The sun scorches the city and the hot, dry heat of the day sticks in the air for hours after, refusing to dissipate even once the sun has set. It shouldn’t be this warm just past midnight, but Dick isn’t truly complaining. Heat drives people indoors- into nightclubs and dance clubs, and as it turns out, even strip clubs.

The heat is good for business.

To his left, Dick can see people moving around on the street, on their way to or from somewhere, and even if Dick has never been one for smoking, he’s always enjoyed a little people watching. A dumpster sits on the other side of the door he’d exited from, blocking him from street view- not that anyone with any sense would be peering down alleyways. The people of Gotham know better than to go looking for trouble.

Then again, Gotham doesn’t have its reputation for nothing; trouble has a way of finding everyone in this town at least once.

Dick feels it before he hears it, the sensation of being scrutinized before the sound of something falling from high up, the rattle of the severely rusted over fire escape not enough to cover the soft grunt and the sound of two feet landing not far from him. Whirling to his right, Dick has his fists up before he realizes anyone who actually wanted to hurt him, wouldn’t have announced their presence quite so blatantly.

That is basically the look he’s getting from the hooded teenager to his right, but Dick still presses a hand to his own chest. “Jesus Christ, Damian, you scared the sense out of me.”

Going up on his toes, likely to alleviate the sting of jumping off a fire escape, Damian quips, “What little there was to begin with.”

“I’m not the one jumping off fire escapes for dramatic effect.” Dick points out, grinning at the boy.

Damian adjusts his hood, sparing Dick a, “ _Tt._ ”

They both know that of the two of them, one is distinctly more dramatic than the other- and it isn’t Damian.

“So,” Dick ventures. “What’s going on tonight?”

Beside him comes the soft rustle of fabric, the result of Damian shoving his hands into the front pockets of his hoodie. Dick is accustomed to the frequent, if brief, stalls in their conversation. Damian is far more serious than Dick was at his age, and where a simple _nothing’s up_ would suffice for most teens, its obvious that Damian holds a higher expectation of himself. If he can’t conjure up something he deems of adequate importance, he won’t say anything at all.

Never in his life has Dick met a kid quite like Damian.

The teen all but throws himself in the space next to Dick, shoulders pressed to the wall Dick’s leaning against, jutting his hips out at a sharp, almost petulant angle.

“Your _friend_ ,” Damian’s tone does a lot to identify just which friend he’s speaking of- though it doesn’t hold quite the contempt Damian usually unleashes when Tim is involved; in the neon blue afterglow of the club’s lights, Dick can even tell Damian’s lip isn’t curled. This is new and exciting territory. “Was out here.”

“Yeah?” Dick’s smile is hopeful, if tentative. “Did you guys talk?”

“No.” The response is defensive, like Dick’s asked Damian if he’s done something particularly foul recently. Dick just shrugs, amused at the way the teen next to him seems to dig his fists deeper into the pockets of his hoodie.

Music seeps out of the club, through the walls the way the pollution of Gotham reaches for the sky, and for a moment they share what is the equivalent of silence in this twenty-four seven city. Dick isn’t alarmed. When the teen first started showing up on Dick’s breaks- to what was, at the time, Dick’s extreme confusion and discomfort- they were lucky to get fifteen words out between them. It was awkward, to the extreme. They’ve made marked progress, even if friendly conversation still seems like a foreign concept to Damian, as if he’s more accustomed to providing information than voicing his thoughts- or just not talking at all. ( Considering who his father is, Dick can kind of see where that might have come from- but that is so far from Dick’s place, he couldn’t begin to help with that situation if he tried. ) For a maladjusted kid with a father richer than God and a chip on his shoulder substantial enough to see from space, Dick’s gonna say a little companionable silence is one of the more normal things in Damian’s life.

Even if said companionable silence is with the stripper he tried to rub off on the last time he all but waltzed into one of his father’s many and lucrative adult entertainment venues, on his more than passable fake ID.

Hey, it’s Gotham. No one’s asking for things to be _perfect_.

Damian is perfunctory when he says, “He was otherwise occupied.”

Dick glances over at Damian, giving him the overt display of interest Damian won’t admit to needing. Tim would only have been back here on break, and there are few people who would willingly walk into a faintly lit alley behind the club- certainly none that Timmy would want to interact with.

Not quite hidden by the drape of his hood over his brow, Dick can tell Damian has shifted his head slightly to look at him, the tips of his eyelashes just visible in the neon glow of the club’s lights.

“The compensation you receive from performing in my father’s establishment, is it sufficient to meet your needs?”

“Talk about out of left field, Dami…” Dick chuckles, wondering where their previous conversation disappeared to in Damian’s head. Idly bouncing his ass against the concrete they’re both leaning on, Dick nods. “I mean, it depends on the night- and the clientele, of course- but yeah, I get paid pretty well.”

“And your other needs?”

Dick isn’t sure he’s ever going to get used to the way Damian’s questions can sometimes sound like accusations.

“Uh?” Eloquent as ever. Dick tilts his head in Damian’s direction, not quite sure what he’s being asked. “Like what?”

Hidden in the front pockets of Damian’s hoodie are his hands, twin disturbances in the teen’s otherwise uniformly sleek appearance.

“Your sexual needs, Grayson.” Damian says, point blank, and barrels on, either missing or simply ignoring the way Dick’s eyebrows leap up to his hairline. “Intercourse, primarily.”

“I-“ That’s all Dick can come up with right now, equal parts embarrassed, surprised, and caught off guard. If Damian’s previous question was from out of left field, this one is damn well out of the park.

Dick was not prepared for this kind of conversation, but Damian is both impatient and thorough, and Dick’s preparedness hardly seems to matter as the teen forges on.

“Your occupation is steeped in sensual imagery and sexual stimulation for those around you, and for-“ Damian swallows the ‘ _yourself_ ’ that sits on the tip of his tongue, seized by the memory of Grayson’s blue-striped fingers and a distinct, now forbidden, hardness pressed between their bellies. The hoodie hides the furious blush that claws its way up the back of Damian’s neck. Still, he soldiers on. “For you to continue performing superiorly, your needs must be adequately addressed.”

Dick isn’t sure what Damian thinks he could do with or about the information he’s asking for- not that Dick is going to answer him- but he figures he has a better question for the teen. “Damian, where is this coming from?”

Grumbled from beneath the hood, “That isn’t an answer, Grayson.”

There is very little Dick would deem off limits when it comes to getting Damian to open up, to share a little instead of dutifully recite, but this is decidedly one of those off-limits subjects. Dick doesn’t want to shoot Damian down, especially when he sounds oddly invested in the answer, but whatever’s piqued Damian’s interest leads to places he’s not at all sure he should even admit exist.

“Seriously, Dami, you don’t need to worry about… that.” He doesn’t say _me_ , doesn’t say just how much he’d rather delude himself into thinking Damian doesn’t remember the feel of his ass through spandex, the sight of him stripped near naked and in his lap, working the teen like a client. “My work and my personal life are, uh, _very_ _much_ separate.”

There is a moment of relative quiet that fails to be as comfortable as the one previous, rising between them like the pressure behind a blister, before Damian grumbles. “Tt. You needn’t treat me like a simpleton.”

Perplexed doesn’t even begin to cover the look on Dick’s face. “I’m… not?”

“I know what it means to come back here,” Damian asserts, kicking the toe of his boot against the stray leaf of newspaper under his foot. “Drake is hardly inconspicuous- or restrained.”

Dick feels like he’s quickly losing track of the conversation, if he hasn’t completely lost all comprehension of it already. “I’m sorry, what did Tim do?”

Under his hoodie, Dick can see the teen’s shoulders tense.

“My father provides his employees with a designated indoor area for conversing and resting. Removing oneself from the establishment, to this area specifically, implies an intention to perform fellatio.” Damian sounds like he’s reciting an answer he’s memorized, and he’s quick to add, as if afraid he’ll get marked off for incompleteness, “Or, a variety of other- sexual acts.”

Quite simply, a roundhouse kick to the temple would have left Dick less surprised.

He’s not sure where Damian got that idea from- well, yes, he does have _some_ idea of where he got the idea. Sex drives the media, and Dick can only imagine what Damian’s been watching in his free time; the teen’s obviously got enough contacts to conjure up a very convincing fake ID, and the internet is not nearly half as difficult to navigate. So _where_ the idea came from isn’t exactly a mystery, but Dick’s drawing straws as to why Damian would think it applicable in _this_ scenario. Sure, there might be the occasional couple that tumbles back here to get into it, but it certainly isn’t the rule, and Dick can’t imagine why Damian would think it the rule. Before Damian started showing up, Dick used to take his breaks out here just to get away from the noise, and Tim-

Tim… is where this all started.

“Are you saying that Tim…?” Dick asks, needing the clarification before he follows in the footsteps of these wild assumptions.

“Tt,” Damian sighs, irritated at the continued mentioning of Timothy. “On the twelfth, the fifteenth, and the twenty-first of this month Drake has utilized this space to fellate an overly muscled man in flannel.”

Honestly, its none of his business what Tim does with his time, or his mouth for that matter, but its still surprising to hear.

Dick’s got a criminally active imagination.

“Including tonight’s activities,” Damian adds, chipping away at Dick’s ability to keep his mind from wandering. “The evidence is fairly substantial.”

Dick shakes his head, trying to shake loose the images forming in his mind.

“What Tim does isn’t reflective of what everyone does.” Dick points out, only to see Damian’s hood turn to him in his peripheral. A very deliberately quirked eyebrow tells him more than he needs to know. “Okay. So not just Tim.”

Dick isn’t sure why they’re having this conversation, or how he led them to it, but he feels like he should apologize for somehow allowing them to get here. He feels responsible for getting them away from the topic, or at the very least providing Damian with some perspective.

(How he’s going to deal with the thought of Damian watching- because he _had_ to have watched- Tim on his knees, swallowing another guy’s cock…

Well. Dick’s going to need some alone time to figure that one out.)

“Okay, well, it’s obviously not the sole intention.” Dick makes a bid for reason. “ _I_ meet you here all the time!”

The silence that stretches between them now is almost palpable in it’s presence. Damian is motionless beside him, hands still shoved in his pockets, eyes trained on Dick. After a couple seconds, a horn screams its way through the night, tearing the silence into a distinct before and after.

Oh.

“ _Oh._ “ Dick’s tongue feels slow in his mouth and it is really too warm back here. While trying to wrap his mind around the implications of Damian meeting him here- not once, not twice, but _multiple_ times- Damian grows impatient, or just bold enough, and reaches across the space that separates them.

“Whoa.” Before his fingers have a chance to hook in the folded over band of Dick’s lounge pants, Dick grabs him by the wrist. “That’s not going to happen.”

Dick can feel the clench of Damian’s fist in the tendons at his wrist, the set of his face cast in blue from the club’s neon signs is defiant.

“Why? You do not find me physically displeasing.” Damian’s look dares Dick to argue the contrary.

Dick _isn’t_ falling into that trap.

“That is SO not the point here, Damian.”

Damian seems to recognize that Dick hasn’t denied anything, he’s just keeping this from moving any further- and as Damian’s eyes move from Dick’s hand on his wrist and back to Dick’s face, its clear he isn’t on board with that plan of inaction.

“If experience is what worries you Grayson, I can assure you I’ve done extensive research.”

What Dick wouldn’t give to have missed the subtle yet important message underlying that sentence.

“I-” Dick really wants to say he wishes he couldn’t bring the image of Damian sitting at his computer to mind, clicking through over the top porno clips of mouths on dicks, taking notes with the computer muted or turned down low enough to just barely hear the wet slurping sounds that accompany extreme close-ups of lips stretched around straining cocks. ( He wants to want that, but there’s a world of difference between wanting and doing. ) Dick’s hand tightens around Damian’s wrist, which he lets go of promptly. “I’m sure you have. But, again, not the point.”

Instead of returning his hand to his side and respecting the distance between them, Damian steps forward, putting his body in the space his hand just vacated. He’s far too close for Dick’s comfort right now.

“Consent is a nonissue, Grayson. I want to-“ Damian looks down Dick’s body, far from primped in his loose fitting break wear, and the tip of his tongue darts out, anticipatory, to wet his lips. “ _Pleasure_ you.”

Dick’s head is going to explode.

Actually, he might just drop straight into hell. Less fuss for everyone that way.

“We- uh, whoa.” Dick clears his throat, stalling in the most obvious of ways. He really wants to squeeze his eyes shut, block his view of Damian’s eagerness, but Dick doesn’t exactly trust Damian not to try anything if he takes his eyes off of him. Instead, he gives his head a quick, mostly ineffectual shake. “Look, I know this seems entirely, uh, logical to you right now, but we _can’t_ do this.”

Damian’s bottom lip is shiny with spit and it makes concentrating on his displeased expression more difficult than it should be. “Explain yourself.”

The firm set of his jaw says he’s annoyed at Dick, but there’s something in the way he stands, defensive, like he’s holding his ground because he’s too proud to back down and bow out.

If he’s honest, a small part of Dick is impressed with the kid’s mettle.

Rejection isn’t something full grown adults tend to handle well, let alone teenagers—and yet Damian is still there, staring him down like he needs a better reason before he admits defeat. Dick realizes that zero parts of him should be interested in any part of Damian, impressive mettle or not, but… Gotham really is a far cry from an ideal world.

Dick sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“Forgetting, for one second, that you’re the son of my boss- _and_ that public indecency is a very real, very prosecutable offense” Dick can tell from the look on Damian’s face that these reasons aren’t what he would qualify as “good” reasons, so Dick cuts to the heart of the matter. “You’re toting around a _fake ID_ to get into strip clubs.”

“My father disposed of that identification.” Damian counters, petulant.

Dick doesn’t miss the specification.

“Yeah, but needing one in the first place means you’re not eighteen, and _that_ could get me in a world of trouble.” The defiant shape of Damian’s mouth finally cracks; his otherwise flawless poker face ruined by the barest hint of a downward tilt at the corners of his lips. Its clear he’s playing the conversation out in his head, trying to stay a step ahead; predicting Dick’s counters to his arguments and trying to figure out a way to manipulate the conversation to his advantage—frustrated when he realizes he can’t. There’s nothing he can do to change his age, and he can’t change Dick’s mind.

“I’m not going to tell anyone.” Damian promises, and he sounds so sure, like keeping it a secret should be enough to change Dick’s mind.

That’s exactly why it can’t happen.

“ _I’m_ not going to put that burden on you.”

For a minute they both stand there, holding their ground like the first one to break will determine the winner of this ridiculous debate. ( There is no debate. Nothing is going to happen and that’s the end of it. ) Dick is starting to understand that knowing Damian is like voluntarily engaging in a constant battle of wills, and Damian is obviously used to getting his way.

The problem being, of course, that small, greedy part of Dick that says maybe letting his boss’ son have his way wouldn’t be all that bad for either of them…

The door behind Dick opens and a rush of cool air escapes into the alley, breaking their stalemate. Dick turns and Damian takes a step back, retreating into his hoodie, as Jason leans out of the doorway. An eyebrow raises into the shock of white at his forehead and Dick feels unfairly guilty. “You need a minute Dickie?”

“No,” Dick frowns at Jason, which does exactly nothing to cow him. If anything, the grin on his face widens to reveal teeth.

“Yeah, o _kay_. Well, if you’re _done_ ,” Jason deliberately looks at the half hidden figure behind Dick, and Dick moves to block Jason’s line of sight. Damian’s got his hoodie on, but Jason has an odd relationship with their mutual employer and no reason not to get on his good side. “Break’s over.”

“Got it.” Dick says, adding a pointed, “Thanks.”

Jason gives him a facetious salute, and a nod directed meaningfully behind Dick, an ‘ _I see you there_ ’, before pulling the door closed again.

Dick wants to sigh, or maybe just sit down and rub at his temples for a couple hours, but he’s got a job to get back to—and even though he feels distinctly terrible about leaving Damian without clearing this all up, it is certainly easier inside, where everyone follows the rules even if they don’t particularly like them.

He’s about to turn around, to tell Damian to go home and forget about this whole idea he’s concocted so they can move on with their lives, when he recognizes the distinct sensation of fingers fisting in his shirt and yanking him down. It happens too quickly to stop, and the contact barely lasts long enough to constitute a real kiss—or that’s what Dick tells himself.

( If he happens to remember that Damian’s eyes were closed, or that his lips definitely made more contact with Dick’s bottom lip than the top… well.

Call it reverse memory loss. )

When Damian lets go of his shirt, returning to the ground from his tiptoes, he’s scowling like he isn’t the one who just successfully pulled a fast one. He shoves his hands back into his pockets, in what Dick can only assume is a gesture of good faith that he won’t do it again. “Don’t patronize me Grayson, or I will break your face.”

Dick should be mad that Damian won’t stop pushing, that he stepped across the line just to prove he could—but that’s so _Damian_ that Dick honestly can’t help but smile. “I thought that’s what you liked about me.”

Somehow, Damian’s snorted _tt_ sounds amused. “You have a _few_ other redeemable attributes.”

It isn’t exactly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to Dick, but from Damian it’s practically singing praise.

He’s stepping around Dick to walk to the mouth of the alley when Dick reaches for his shoulder. Damian turns fluidly, and Dick doesn’t have to look at his face to know what the teen wants to happen—what he hopes will happen.

Dick hates letting him down.

“We can still talk, but we should probably meet at the pizza place across the street,” Dick says, trying not to put too much stock in the way the teen’s eyebrows draw down. “Alright?”

He feels obligated to do as much damage control as possible, and for a worrisome minute Dick isn’t sure what Damian is going to do or say. It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to figure out that Damian doesn’t have very many people he feels he can talk to. This could very well blacklist Dick from a seemingly exclusive list—but he can’t knowingly let Damian continue to lurk back here. Not now, not when he knows Damian well enough to care.

Damian nods once, decisive, with an adult-like seriousness. “Alright.”

“Cool.” Dick gives Damian’s shoulder a pat, glad that they’re on the same page.

Damian doesn’t move until Dick removes his hand, whereupon he turns his back to the older man and declares, “It’s a date.”

He’s walking away, ignoring the sounds of Dick’s correction as he slips out of the alley and into the bustle of Gotham’s nightlife.

They may not be on _exactly_ the same page, but hey, at least they’re in the same book.


End file.
